After months of pestering my beleaguered wife, our family finally purchased a Wii. Because of its unique playing system, this is a platform we can play with our four-year old daughter — and, boy, does she love it! Actually, her favorite part isn’t really even a game — it is creating virtual Mii characters. In addition to her personal Mii, she has created several others Miis named “Sleeping Beauty” and “Lumberwell.” We’re still scratching our heads over that one. If I ever figure out how to upload the images, I’ll show some of the funny Miis she has created. We’re also still trying to figure out how to get our Miis to look more like us. Maybe I should talk to Kye.

Our daughter has always named her dolls in a very creative manner. It took us weeks to figure out why she kept calling one her dolls “Ray-fa-fa.” Finally, it dawned on us that she had taken this name from her favorite movie, The Sound of Music — specifically, the scene where the Von Trapp children are learning to sing, “Do Re Mi” and they hit the funky breakdown: “Do mi mi, mi so so, re fa fa, la ti ti…”

I’m glad to report that we have managed to avoid any horrific Wii-injuries so far, but I must say playing the Wii is surprisingly demanding. While it probably says more about my physical conditioning than the difficulty of Wii gaming, I’m pretty worn out after a couple of rounds of boxing or after a homerun derby.

So far, our favorites are Cooking Mama (pictured above) and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Cooking Mama is exactly what it sounds like — a game of cooking up different kinds of foods. I was kind of skeptical at first but this game is seriously addictive fun. And, again, surprisingly demanding. Try racing the clock to stir up the batter or chop up some fatty bacon (in actual physical motions with your Wii-mote) and you’ll be sweating up a storm in no time.

Twilight Princess is an incredible — not to mention time-consuming — game. I really enjoyed Wind Waker (despite some negative reviews) and this takes the franchise in a new direction. Strangely, a lot of people end up here after searching for some variant of “Zelda” and “Wind Waker.” Ah, nerdom. Another birthday gift from my wife was this shirt, which pretty much sums it all up.